1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to adding a feature of an emergency shut down to any water meter.
2. Description of the Related Art
All water meters have a way to measure the amount of liquid passing while it is flowing, to stop recording when the flow stops, and to re-continue the recording when the flow restarts. The summations of runs form a total. Some water meters have batch measuring, and also they continue recording until re-set. It is very rare for a water meter to run continuously for a long time. The quantity flowing in a single run depends on the number of users the water meter is serving like an apartment, a single house, a commercial building or a housing compound.
In normal usage, a single run amount could be double the average of runs or tripled or even being six fold of the average runs, and beyond that, it means there is a leakage, or an unattended outlet keeping the water meter to continue on recording.
In practice, the only way to cut the flow of water is either at the end of a specific batch or manually when the leaked water become visible, but this will cause a great deal of damage in buildings furniture beside the water losses.
The water meter already measures the amount flowing in each single run from its start and added it up to a previous registered quantity so if we copied this single run recording and compare it with a maximum target allowed, then, if the amount flowing continuously in a single run reach that target, this means an emergency exists due to leakage or uncontrolled flow.
If there is an irrigation system in the house, it will be shown as a leak. In this case irrigation water should be taken out of an expansion tank to allow the single run mechanism to be re-set when the tank is full at intervals.
We could link the set target with a mechanism to shutdown a valve, so now we have a means to detect the leakage or uncontrolled flow in addition to its function as a water meter.